My thanks to our former road manager Jan Gregor, for photocopying and mailing me this essay.

Hairy and horrible – It baffled science!

It was about six feet tall, covered with a thick coat of hair, and seemed to be a cross between a monkey and a man. I say “seemed to be” because the thing was frozen inside a cloudy block of ice, frustrating any attempts to take a good, close look. It would have been just another clever carny “gaff” if a couple of Abominable Snowman buffs hadn’t caught wind of it and stirred up a fuss.

Here, for the first time, is the story behind “The Mysterious Creature in Ice.” Read the facts and decide for yourself – was it really a Snowman or just a Snow-job?

The saga of The Creature begins with an innocuous item in the July 29, 1967 issue of Amusement Business, the “bible” of the outdoor entertainment industry. Titled “New Creature Show Bows,” the article went as follows:

“Among the outstanding back-end shows making its debut this season is Frank Hansen’s Siberskoye (Siberian) Creature. It apparently rolled up the record grosses with the No. 1 unit of Bobby Cohn’s West Coast Shows at the Portland (Ore.) Teen-Age Fair, with similar success at the Seattle and Omaha teen expositions.

“Kudos came from Don Burton, producer of the Portland event, who termed it ‘one of the cleanest and best conducted attractions we’ve ever had in our six years of producing fairs,’ and Joe Gunson, internal auditor for the KOIL (Good Guys) Teen Fun Fair in Omaha, who reported the Creature drew 40 percent of the approximate 58,000 attendance. Tab was 35 cents, 25 cents for kids.

“Bookings to date include the independent midways at the heart of Illinois Fair, Peoria; Wisconsin State Fair, West Allis; Minnesota State Fair, St. Paul; Kansas State Fair, Hutchison; and Oklahoma State Fair, Oklahoma City.

“A retired air force pilot, Hansen entered show business last year with his ‘Mystery Machine’ after it was returned to him from the Smithsonian Institution. He wound up at the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix, then moved to California to frame the new unit at an estimated cost of $50,000.

“The Creature is framed in a 40-ft. semi which can be folded up and on the road in 45 minutes. Trailer has paneled walls, carpeted floors, individually lighted, airline-type steps and watchman’s quarters in front. Camper-type quarters are air-conditioned and carpeted, with shower, lavatory, refrigerator, stove, oven and self-contained water, waste and electric units.

Exhibited in a specially-designed refrigerated coffin which maintains 10 below zero at all times, the ‘creature’ is frozen in a 3,000-pound block of ice, clearly visible through a double thermo-glass top which prevents frosting and acts as a heat barrier. A portable electric generator supplies power on the road and for emergency use on location”

So the Creature, whatever it was, had its origins in California in 1966, when it was framed by a retired air force pilot, Frank Hansen, for the 1967 season. A photo in the Amusement Business article showed that it was really a modern variation of the old-time “pit shows.” One side of the exhibition trailer stood open so that anyone passing by could look inside and see customers gathered around the Creature’s coffin. Simple curiosity would bring ‘em in.

The Creature made the round of fairs for a couple of seasons – then suddenly the poo-poo hit the fan…

In 1969, Dr. Ivan T. Sanderson was the goateed, distinguished-looking “science editor” for the brash men’s magazine Argosy, based in New York City. He also was a self-proclaimed authority on the so-called Abominable Snowman. In fact, Sanderson was a Snowman “apostle,” tirelessly trying to spread the word to unbelievers through his “Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained,” which he ran out of his home in Columbia, Warren County, New Jersey.

In the May 1969 issue of Argosy, Sanderson boldly declared that he had finally found what he was looking for – a real Snowman!

“I must admit that even I, who have spent most of my life in this search, am filled with wonder as I report the following,” he gushed. “There is a comparatively fresh corpse, preserved in ice, of a specimen of at leas one kind of ultra-primitive, fully-haired man-thing, that displays so many heretofore unexpected and non-human characteristics as to warrant our dubbing it a ‘missing link’…”

What had thrown Dr. Sanderson into joyous rapture was none other than Frank Hansen’s Siberian Creature.

In his Argosy article, Sanderson described how he had made his momentous discovery:

“Early in January of this year [1969], I was sitting at my typewriter and staring at nothing… when the phone rang. The caller was a Minneapolis man who introduced himself as a zoologist and owner of an animal import-export business specializing in reptiles… After a general chat, this fellow told me he had just returned from Chicago where he had visited the famous annual Stock Fair. While there, he had inspected a side show which consisted of a single large coffin in a trailer-truck. In this coffin, which was glass-covered and brightly lit with strip lights, there was a huge block of ice, about half of it as clear as the air in the room, the rest frosty or darkly opaque. In the ice was the corpse of a large, powerfully built man, or ‘man-thing,’ completely clothed in dark, stiff hair about three inches long. My informant urged me to go take a look at it, since he, being a real student of what we call ABSMery (abominable-snowman-related information) and having read everything available on the subject, felt that it was the real thing, despite it being a mystery.”

Sanderson’s anonymous informant must have been persuasive, because, according to the good doctor, “that little bell rang inside me as it used to when I discovered a new animal while collecting professionally for zoos and museums. I started packing one of our station wagons with my traveling office and recording equipment.”

Let me stop here a minute and make a couple of observations. What we have so far is this: a guy who runs a pet business happens to be a Snowman nut. (There are hordes of ’em, all sniffing around for Bigfoot or whatever, trying to inject some excitement into their pointless little lives.) This guy calls up the dean of Snowman “investigators,” Ivan Sanderson, and says that a carny grind show is really a staggeringly important scientific discovery. Sight unseen, Sanderson’s uncanny instincts tell him that the guy is right. That’s the story so far.

I don’t know about you, but I’m already pissed by the underlying arrogance of Sanderson’s account. Like Millions of “marks” before him, he naturally assumed that he was smarter than any carny could ever be. Did he really believe that a showman could own “the find of the century” and not know what it was? Or, even worse, did he think that a showman could know that he had a “real” Abominable Snowman and still be stupid enough to charge pocket change for folks to look at it? Let me put it to you this way: If you had a “real” Snowman, would you haul it around the carny circuit, making peanuts, or would you be on the front page of every newspaper in the world, raking in millions of dollars? Think about it. Now back to Dr. S…

In his account, Sanderson went on to mention that, in the same house where he worked (presumably his own) was “just about the only man in the world fully qualified to pronounce upon such an item as this, Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, of the Royal Academy of Sciences of his native Belgium, and author of, among others, a book entitled ‘On the Track of Unknown Animals’…”

In other words, Dr. Heuvelmans was a fellow Snowman nut.

“I am not going to pinpoint just where we went at this time,” Sanderson wrote, “other than to day that it was west of the Mississippi, because I know only too well what publicity can do, so I respect the plea of the gentleman [Frank Hansen] in whose care this exhibit is stored during the winter season – especially because it is on his private property.”

As we’ll see, Sanderson didn’t respect another of Hansen’s requests – that the creature not be represented as authentic.

Sanderson went on to describe how he and Heuvelmans traveled to a distant motel, where they stayed overnight before setting out the next morning to visit the Creature’s caretaker. “We got there,” he reported. “by back-tracking and using a compass” – [I guess they forgot their road map!] – “and eventually barreled into a beautiful snow-covered garden surrounded by a grove of planted conifers. And there stood a lovely ranch-type house on the one hand and a large trailer truck on the other. We were most graciously received, and, in fact, invited to stay as house guests.”

After some chit-chat, their host, Mr. Hansen, donned a parka, and they all went out to the trailer to stare at the Thing. It was a moving experience for Sanderson.

“Looking at the body of a descendant of one of my possible ancestors – especially since it looked as I had always expected it would – really shook me up,” he confided. “We spent the afternoon photographing it. I held the lights and things for Bernard while he tried to get shots in under the opaque parts of the ice. We left at sundown.”

The next day, the two scientists fetched some “added equipment” and drove back up the mountain to rejoin their “charming host and hostess.” They spent that evening and the next morning snooping around the Creature. In his article, Sanderson described what they found:

“On the whole, Bozo, as we nicknamed him, is a very sturdy, approximately six-foot-tall ‘human,’ covered with two – to four-inch, stiff, but thickly growing hair, except on the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands, his penis and his face. He has nails, not claws or ‘overgrown’ nails, on both his hands and feet. He has practically no neck, the muscles from the side of his head forming a great triangle that flows into his shoulders, which are very wide and constructed like those of a powerful human wrestler. His torso is what is commonly called barrel-shaped and it tapers down, not to a waist, but to rather narrow hips. His legs are actually about the standard length for a six-foot man, but his arms are longer than the average.

His most outstanding features, and those which strike one first, are his hands. They are enormous, rather spatulate, but of entirely human proportions – except for one feature. This is the thumb, which is slender and excessively long, reaching, it seems, almost to the last joint of the first or index finger. The feet are more than ten inches wide, measured across the toes. The toes are larger and both stuffy and ‘tubby,’ and the little toe is almost as big as the others. The feet and the toes are covered with many long hairs that appear to be very stiff and curve, down. Most significant, however, is the fact that the big toe lies alongside the next one, as it does in us (it is what is called apposed, as distinct from the big toe of the apes which is opposed like our thumb). This is the one and almost only clear distinction between men (Hominids) and apes (Pongids).

“Bozo’s face is his most startling feature, both to anthropologists and anyone else – and for several reasons. Unfortunately, both eyeballs have been ‘blow out’ of their sockets. One appears to be missing, but the other seems (to some, at least) to be just visible under the ice. This gives Bozo a gruesome appearance, which is enhanced by a considerable amount of blood diffused from the sockets through the ice. The most arresting feature of the face is the nose. This is large but fairly wide, like that of a Pekinese dog – but not like that of a gorilla, which actually doesn’t have a nose, per se. The nostrils are large, circular, and point straight forward, which is very odd. The mouth is only fairly wide and there is no eversion of the lips at all. His ‘muzzle’ is no more bulging, prominent, or pushed forward than is our own; not at all prognathous like that of a chimp. One side of the mouth is slightly agape and two small teeth can be seen. These should be the right upper canine and the first premolar. The canine or eye-tooth is very small and in no way exaggerated into a tusk, or similar to that of a gorilla or a chimp. But – to me at least – the most interesting features of all are some folds and wrinkle lines around the mouth just below the cheeks. These are absolutely human, and are like those seen in a heavy – jowled, older white man.”

In short, the two less-than-objective investigators found what they wanted to find – a “real” Abominable Snowman!

Sanderson declared: “Let me say, simply, that one look was actually enough to convince us that this was – from our point of view, at least – the ‘genuine article’” – an amazing statement, coming from a so-called scientist!

Sanderson proceeded to explain why Bozo couldn’t possibly be a gaff:

“You just cannot ‘make’ a corpse like this, either out of bits and pieces of the bodies of other animals, or of wax, with some half a million hairs inserted into it,” he stated. “And you can’t get the kind of hairs that cover this corpse from any other kind of animal that I know of. Also, the proportions of this body, and several of its special features, are just not known at all – or, at least, have never been suggested either by paleontologists who have studied the fossil bones of primitive man-things, or even by the skilled artists who have fleshed out and made reconstructions of what the former have found. In fact, any ‘artists’ setting out to ‘make’ such a thing would have to have a model, and none is available. But, apart from that, you can’t completely fool two trained morphologists with zoological, anatomical and anthropological training. No! Bozo is the genuine article.”

It doesn’t take a genius to poke holes in Sanderson’s argument for “Bozo’s” authenticity. First, he says that “You just cannot ‘make’ a corpse like this, either out of bits and pieces of the bodies of other animals, or of wax, with some half a million hairs inserted into it.” Why not? Didn’t he ever hear of the Feejee Mermaid (half fish and half monkey)? As for inserting hairs into wax, maybe Sanderson should have visited the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” Museums, where he would have found two life-size wooden statues of the Japanese artist Hananuma Masakichi. Masakichi-san created the perfect likenesses of himself when he thought he was going to die young from tuberculosis. He plucked every hair out of his body (including pubic hair) and painstakingly inserted them into tiny holes drilled into the statue’s solid wood. Compared with that feat, putting hairs into wax would be a piece of cake.

Next, Sanderson says “you can’t get the kind of hairs that cover this corpse from any other kind of animal that I know of.” Well, maybe that’s because it wasn’t real hair! In any case, I defy anyone to identify where some hairs came from by looking at them through a cloudy block of ice! It takes microscopic examination to positively identify hair samples.

Then Sanderson declares that “the proportions of this body, and several of its special features, are just know at all…” Well, that could have been because the Creature was the creation of somebody’s imagination! That possibility must not have crossed Dr. Sanderson’s mind.

(The original Argosy caption reads; Right: Line drawing showing measurements taken from block of ice containing Missing Link. Creature’s characteristics include short neck, arms reaching to knees, disproportionate hands and feet and extremely husky body. These features agree largely with what is known of the classic Neanderthalers. Some scientists, mostly Russian and Mongolian, have held for years that scattered populations of these pre-historic men still survive in remote areas.)

Most amazingly, Sanderson states that “any ‘artists’ setting out to ‘make’ such a thing would have to have a model, and none is available.” I beg your pardon? Why would somebody need a “model” to create an ape-man creature? You fashion a wire frame; you get some skins; you make the face, hands, and feet out of rubber; you freeze it all in a block of ice. There- that wasn’t too hard to imagine, was it?

Here’s something else that Dr. Sanderson apparently never thought of… Maybe that block of ice was there to obscure, not to preserve!

Sanderson went on to say that “the agent who has handled this exhibit and who acts as caretaker for it during the winter off-season told me that it was first heard of through a group of Americans whose official duties took them back and forth across the Pacific. From these, it was learned that this ‘curiosity’ was lying in a 6,000-pound block of ice, in a sort of super plastic bag in a large commercial deep-freeze unit in Hong Kong. It was offered for sale, by an exporter who is in the business of marketing all manner of goods, including curios. It was bought by an American.

“The seller offered various stories as to the origin of the thing. According to one, it was found floating in a block of sea-ice in international waters somewhere in the Bering Sea by a Russian sealing ship, and was hauled aboard and put in the hold. The ship put into a Chinese port and the Chinese authorities seized the specimen and off-loaded it, whereupon it ‘disappeared’ into Red China. By this account, the specimen (still in some 6,000 pounds of ice) finally turned up in Hong Kong.

“An alternate story told how it was found by a Japanese whaling outfit somewhere off the coast of Kamchatka, taken to Japan and then sold to the exporter in Hong Kong. There are also other versions, but none can be confirmed; no names of any ships involved have been ascertained, and nothing further is known.”

It sounds like Sanderson and Huevelmans were being fed a lot of ripe “baloney,” which they eagerly devoured. Despite their university degrees, they were still just a couple of “marks,” ready to fall for some good, old-fashioned flim-flam. Frank Hansen, however, was more straight-forward with them than they deserved or appreciated. As Sanderson described it:

“There was an initial almost furious resistance to any suggestion of publicizing this thing in any way, thought I was shown published write-ups of it in trade magazines.”

The big difference, which apparently escaped Sanderson, is that he wanted to publicize the Thing as “authentic,” whereas the so-called trade magazines – which presumably included Amusement Business and other show-biz publications – recognized. Hansen’s creature for what it was: a show.

Sanderson went on: “It was explained that the owner ‘did not want to fool the public’ and had therefore billed this exhibit as a mystery, and as most probably being some kind of Oriental fakery. Moreover, he does not want to know what the thing in the ice really is because, if it is a phony, he feels that by advertising it as some sort of ‘ice-age man,’ he would be committing a fraud on the public.”

Well, it sounds like Hansen gave Sanderson and Heuvelmans as much of the “straight skinny” that he could – but to no avail. In a postscript to Sanderson’s article, Heuvelmans laid it on the line:

“For the first time in history,” he declared, “a fresh corpse of Neanderthal-like man has been found. It means that this form of Hominid, thought to be extinct since prehistoric times, is still living today.

“The long search for the rumored live ’ape-man’ has at last been successful…”

Heuvelmans proceeded to describe the Creature and to repeat Sanderson’s reasons why it couldn’t be a fake. He then added an observation that Sanderson had failed to mention:

“The peculiar structure of the ice and the presence of a pool of blood around the head show that, immediately after death, the corpse was placed in a freezer tank and filled with water and artificially frozen.

“The specimen was apparently killed by a large caliber bullet entering the right eye. The impact blew out the rear of the skull and forced the left eye out of its socket.”

On that Gruesome note, Heuvelmans concluded his statement:

“To sum up, this specimen is a contemporary representative of an unknown form of Hominid, most probably a relic of the Neanderthal type.

“The belief, based on strong testimonial evidence [called “hearsay’ and ‘tall tales” by us non-scientific types- C.F.], that small, scattered populations of Neanderthals survive has been held for years by some scientists, mostly Russian and Mongolian.

“A full scientific report of the resent finding, with a description of this new form of living Hominid under the name Homo Pongoides (i.e. “Apelike Man”) has been published in February [1969], in the ‘Bulletin of the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium’ (Vol. 45 No. 4).”

End of story.

So, not only did Sanderson and Heuvelmans ignore Frank Hansen’s request that the Creature not be presented as authentic, but Heuvelmans rushed their “finding” into print a mere month after visiting Hansen. That, as they say, just ain’t cricket.

What amazes me the most is that purportedly reputable “scientists” would bestow a new zoological name on a grind show attraction that they had only peered at through a block of ice! That’s enough to give pseudo-science a bad name!

Well, after the smoke cleared, Hansen and his creature went their merry way, leaving our intrepid investigators looking pretty silly.

Six years later, in October 1975, the Creature came to my neck of the woods, New Jersey, where it was exhibited at the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown. The Oct. 31st edition of a local newspaper, the Asbury Park Press, ran the following item to publicize the event:

“EATONTOWN- Man or monster, illusion or real, these are two of the questions that surround ‘The Mysterious Creature in Ice.’

“No, it is not a Halloween hoax. There is something frozen in ice resembling an oversized man covered with hair.

“The creature, exhibited in a glass-enclosed, refrigerated coffin on a platform at Monmouth Mall this week, has been the center of controversy between scientists [Sanderson and Heuvelmans], who contend the creature is a missing link to man’s past, and its owner and exhibitor, who contends it is an ‘illusion.’

“Frank D. Hansen, Rollingstone, Minn., has taken the creature in its frigid coffin on tours of fairs and shopping centers throughout North America since 1968 [actually, 1967 –C.F.]. Hansen does not own the creature, and he would not divulge the owner’s name to The Press yesterday.

“Hansen said the creature was found on a fishing trip in the Bearing Straights, was thought to be a fish, and was sent to Hong Kong. From there it was sent to Long Beach, Calif., where its owner hired Hansen, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot and fair circuit exhibitor, to take the hairy creature on tours of the country.

“A Belgian scientist heard of the exhibit and the mysterious hairy figure in ice and came to the United States to examine it. Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans of Belgium’s Royal Institute of Natural Sciences, and Ivan Sanderson, science editor of Argosy magazine, together, after much pleading with Hansen, were allowed to examine the creature. In their examinations, the glass to the coffin was broken and the smell of rotting flesh filled the trailer where it was kept. It was then that the scientists knew the creature was real.

“However, when stopped on a crossing of the U.S.- Canadian border, Hansen said the creature was actually a fabricated illusion made to seem real. Even yesterday Hansen said the creature on exhibit was not real, adding that in due time the owner will turn the creature over to scientists to determine the validity.’

Hansen said about 200,000 people saw the creature during exhibits in shopping centers last year with an estimated $50,000 being made in profit. Hansen said half of this money was turned over to various charities.

“’If they (Heuvelmans and Sanderson) had not created such a big fuss and if Heuvelmans had kept his word, the owner would have probably turned it over to someone in 1969, and we would know whether it is real or not,’ Hansen said.”

Whatever the Creature was, it certainly qualified as one of the greatest grindshow attractions of all times, leaving a lasting impression on everybody who saw it. In the 11-11-96 issue of Circus Report, sawdust showman Don Bridwell recalled a memorable encounter with the Creature (or its close relative!):

IN the mid-1970s,” Bridwell wrote, “I played the Saginaw, Mich. Fair with a circus in front of the grandstand. I always loved the fair dates, as I’m a real side show devotee, having worked side show magic on the 1968 Carson & Barnes show myself.

I had plenty of time to check out the midway, and that year there were quite a few side shows and pit shows at the fair, including Ward Hall’s big 10-in-1; a Lion Girl single-O, a drug abuse show; and a number of others.

“The one that got my attention and has stayed with me all these years was a small, actually rather shabby-looking exhibit in a 24 ft. trailer, called ‘Big Foot.’

“I figured, why not? It was only $1.00, and I thought I might see at least a fair wax figure, or some decent put-on at least. What I did see has boggled my mind for a long time now.

“The front of the exhibit was a rather crude painting on plywood of the Sasquatch, the legendary ‘Big Foot’ character. Also some blown-up newspaper reproductions, giving stories of the Big Foot phenomenon over the years.

“Inside there was a large, about 9 ft. long, clear glass coffin, with climate control and refrigeration. Inside was a most definitely humanoid body, about 7.5/8 ft. tall, a totally nude male. The facial features looked much like a gorilla and somewhat like an Australian aborigine. The exposed skin was something like a deep suntan, very leathery. The hair line was sloped back, and the hair was a dark reddish brown.

“The body was hairy, but not overly so. A very muscular frame, the arms longer than normal for a man. The teeth were large and prominent, but not ‘fangs’ or canine at all. What was really startling was that the finger tips and toes were both calloused, and had whorls and characteristics of prints. You could stay in the exhibit as long as you cared to, and could examine the body extremely close. If this was s fake, it was the best one I had ever seen.

“Several years after that, there was a news story about a body of a Big Foot that had been exhibited at fairs and carnivals for a while and then totally disappeared.

“The author of the article, like myself, did not quite know what to make of it. I’m convinced this was the exhibit I had seen.

“Now with a recent documentary sighting and filming of a new ‘Big Foot’ in Northern California, apparently authentic, I wonder all the more whatever became of this strange and unusual exhibit that I had the opportunity of seeing.”

I’m not sure that what Mr. Bridwell saw was Frank Hansen’s original Creature, since Bridwell puts its height at nearly 8 feet, more than 2 feet taller than “Bozo.” And what Bridwell saw appears to have been less hairy than Hansen’s “Siberian Creature.” It may have been a rip-off of Hansen’s exhibit. If it was the original “Bozo,” then Hansen’s show had certainly fallen on hard times, going from a fancy 40-foot semi in 1967 to a seedy 24-foot trailer with a cheap plywood front a few years later.

I almost got to see “The Mysterious Creature in Ice” about 15 years ago, and now I wish that I had. It was on exhibit at the last New Jersey State Fair held at the old Trenton Fairgrounds. That must have been in 1980 or ’81. I remember recognizing the name of the show from the Asbury Park Press article of 1975, but, for some reason, I didn’t go in. As I recall, it was set up like a pit show, inside an open, canopy-like tent. I’ve never seen it since.

Acknowledgment: My thanks to Walt Hudson for supplying the info from Amusement Business.

I learned about the “Minnesota Iceman” as a child, as my mother collected magazines like Saga and Argosy for the Bigfoot articles. I totally forgot about the “Iceman” until I heard Loren Coleman lecturing about various cryptozoological issues several years ago. I was kind of shocked that he took the “Iceman” seriously. Since I was previously a sideshow performer, I was familiar with gaffs, and more specifically how sideshow is promoted.

The “Iceman” crops up in the Bigfoot world from time to time, though it seems to garner far less serious attention than other topics. Loren Coleman seems to be one of he few advocates who still promote it as being real.

For me as a former sideshow performer, the issue is really a “no-brainer”; the thing was a gaff from the beginning. I wholeheartedly agree with several of Fellner’s points. Just because Sanderson and Heuvelmans were educated individuals does not make them immune from being deceived, especially by those whose very job it is to deceive.

Fellner puts it well here:

I don’t know about you, but I’m already pissed by the underlying arrogance of Sanderson’s account. Like Millions of “marks” before him, he naturally assumed that he was smarter than any carny could ever be. Did he really believe that a showman could own “the find of the century” and not know what it was? Or, even worse, did he think that a showman could know that he had a “real” Abominable Snowman and still be stupid enough to charge pocket change for folks to look at it? Let me put it to you this way: If you had a “real” Snowman, would you haul it around the carny circuit, making peanuts, or would you be on the front page of every newspaper in the world, raking in millions of dollars? Think about it.

Ivan Sanderson in particular was an individual who was more than willing to embrace some really off-the-deep-end concepts. In particular, Sanderson claimed that large three toed tracks found in Florida were made by a 15 foot tall penguin!